West of Rome Page 16

  It was daybreak when we drove home.

  About the Author

  JOHN FANTE was born in Colorado in 1909. He attended parochial school in Boulder, and Regis High School, a Jesuit boarding school. He also attended the University of Colorado and Long Beach City College.

  Fante began writing in 1929 and published his first short story in The American Mercury in 1932. He published numerous stories in The Atlantic Monthly, The American Mercury, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Esquire, and Harper’s Bazaar. His first novel, Wait Until Spring, Bandini was published in 1938. The following year Ask the Dust appeared, and in 1940 a collection of his short stories, Dago Red, was published and is now collected in The Wine of Youth.

  Meanwhile, Fante had been occupied extensively in screenwriting. Some of his credits include Full of Life, Jeanne Eagels, My Man and 1, The Reluctant Saint, Something for a Lonely Man, My Six Loves and Walk on the Wild Side.

  John Fante was stricken with diabetes in 1955 and its complications brought about his blindness in 1978, but he continued to write by dictation to his wife, Joyce, and the result was Dreams from Bunker Hill (1982). He died at the age of 74 on May 8, 1983.

  Other Books by John Fante

  The Saga of Arturo Bandini:

  Wait Until Spring, Bandini

  The Road to Los Angeles

  Ask the Dust

  Dreams from Bunker Hill

  Full of Life

  The Brotherhood of the Grape

  The Wine of Youth: Selected Stories of John Fante

  1933 Was a Bad Year

  West of Rome

  The Big Hunger: Stories 1932-1959

  Selected Letters 1932-1981

  The John Fante Reader

  Copyright

  WEST OF ROME. Copyright © 1985 by John Fante.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-01318-7

  First Ecco edition 2002

  Previously published by Black Sparrow Press

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Fante, John, 1909-1983

  West of Rome.

  Contents: My dog Stupid - The orgy.

  Fante, John, 1909-1983. Orgy. 1986. II. Title.

  PS3.511.A594W4 1986 813’.52 86-12995

  ISBN 0-87685-678-4

  ISBN 0-87685-677-6 (pbk.)

  10 11 12 RRD 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12

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